Kodiac Wintergreen graduates at second asking and does so impressively (NYRA/Coglianese)
Red Carpet Ready Doing Well Following G3 Victory Ride
NYRA Press Office
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y.— Bregman Family Racing’s Kodiac Wintergreen rallied impressively to graduate at second asking, arriving in the final strides to notch a three-quarter length score in a 5 1/2-furlong maiden special weight for juveniles fillies on Thursday over firm Spa turf.
Trained by Rusty Arnold, the Kodiac bay improved on a closing runner-up effort to the George Weaver-trained Amidst Waves in a five-furlong maiden special weight on June 11 over the Belmont turf.
“She’s been a filly we’ve liked since Day One. She was at Wavertree with Ciaran Dunne and he sent her to me with a lot of praise,” Arnold said. “She trained really good into her first race, ran a little green and got outrun. George Weaver ran a really nice filly there that beat her.”
The regally-bred filly, out of the Pivotal mare Humble And Proud, is a half-sister to multiple graded stakes-winner Glorious Empire and multiple stakes-winner Love Reigns. Both of those siblings enjoyed Spa success with Glorious Empire taking the 2018 editions of the Grade 2 Bowling Green and Grade 1 Sword Dancer, while Love Reigns captured last year’s Bolton Landing.
Arnold said Kodiac Wintergreen could prove to be an important filly for Bregman Family Racing, nom de course for Alex Bregman, a third baseman and two-time All-Star and World Series-winner for the Houston Astros.
“She’s got quite a bit of family and I think it’s going to be one of the mares he puts in his broodmare band,” Arnold said.
Arnold said Kodiac Wintergreen will stretch out to one mile for her next start on September 10 in the $500,000 Kentucky Downs Juvenile Fillies.
“I’m going to stretch her out a bit. She’ll go to Kentucky Downs and run a flat mile. It’s hard to pass,” Arnold said. “She came out of the race good, and she’ll get home on Monday.”
Ashbrook Farm and Upland Flats Racing’s dual graded-stakes winner Red Carpet Ready exited her distant seventh-place finish in the Grade 3 Victory Ride on July 8 at Belmont in good order.
The sophomore daughter of Oscar Performance captured the Grade 3 Forward Gal in February at Gulfstream Park and added the Grade 2 Eight Belles to her ledger in May at Churchill Downs. Those efforts were split by a distant third-place finish as the mutuel favorite in the Grade 2 Davona Dale in March at Gulfstream.
“She’s doing well. I haven’t breezed her yet. That race was kind of a puzzler to me. She threw one in Florida like that where we thought she’d run well and she didn’t,” Arnold said. “We brought her back home and did a lot of diagnostics on her and she’s fine. She’s training and I’ll probably breeze her next week.”
As a result, Arnold said he won’t bring Red Carpet Ready to Saratoga for a re-match with Victory Ride-winner Maple Leaf Mel in the Grade 1, $500,000 Test on August 5.
“At this time, I don’t have a place I want to run her. She’s not going to come for the Test,” Arnold said. “That’s a really nice filly [Maple Leaf Mel] that won that race. We’re better than we ran and we need to figure out the reason why – and that’s what we’re doing right now.”
